Before I Forget
by Vect the Atoner
Summary: Before she settles things at the Dam, the Courier says goodbye to an old friend... For a given value of "friend".


"So as I was saying, I'm kinda concerned on the whole battle upcoming. Like, I'm just really nervous about it all. Like, this is going to be bigger than almost everything I've done before. By the way, I got you another of those snowglobes you like. This time it's..."

It was like this every other day. That accursed woman would come down here and talk. No, it was less like talking and more like yammering. She came down here and yammered about whatever "issues" she had, like about how the Gun Runners were extorting her for caps. How every time she needed to cross Freeside some poor fool would run at her with a tire iron and into a bullet. And how hard it was to try and set up that Follower companion of hers with a good man.

And him? All he could do was listen. Listen as she sat on that control panel and yammer. And she didn't sit still. No, she never sat still. She banged her feet upon the metal panel. She played with the locks of her strangely green hair. She darted her head from side to side.

He knew it was unlike him to keep note of all of these mundane details. Of course the only other alternative was to listen to her. It was to keep himself sane. To keep hims-

"-ter House?"

She turned her head to face him once again.

"Mr. House? You there?"

She got off the panel and walked towards him. The only thing he could do was to bat his useless limbs at her as she approached. With his dried-out mouth, he could only hiss out, _"Why… Do you even bother…"_ at the woman.

She gave him a curious gaze with those eyes of hers. Those grey almond-shaped eyes of hers. After a brief pause, she looked down at her feet and spoke with an uneasy tone, "W-well, I just wanted to say that… If I don't make back that, y'know… I'll miss talking to you."

Patting his wrinkled old head, she said to him, "I mean, I just wanted to let you know that I respect you and all. I didn't even want to kill you. I like you, Mr. House, and I'm gonna make it up to you one of these days."

Digging into her pockets, she pulled out a small water bottle. Unscrewing it, she told him, "Now time for some hydro dioxide." Putting the bottle just above his mouth, she let a few drops of the water trickle down his throat while trying to be careful not to have him choke.

There was once a time when the name of Robert Edwin House meant power, prestige, hope for the future. Now he was just a withered old husk, kept as little more as a pet by a deranged mail woman. He was little better than those catatonic octogenarians whose fate was to wait for the embrace of death in the retirement homes of the old world.

Still, of all the employees he's ever had, no one was quite like Nef. When he had Victor dig her up, admittedly he was taking a gamble. He merely needed someone to retrieve the Platinum Chip for him. As he observed however, she was not just some mail-woman. As he observed her through Victor, he found that she was more than some vengeance-driven pawn. Nef proved to be the type of person who managed to get a job done, usually with unconventional means. Sometimes it was with words, sometimes it was with guns. She proved herself as an opponent of the ambitions of both Caesar and Kimball. She showed herself to have a strong desire to help those around her, particularly the company she attracts. She also happened to be a cannibal with a pack-rat mentality and a Mentats habit, but everyone had their vices as he thought at the time.

He had no doubts that she would succeed. While she, like many others he has known, did have a tendency to get into situations where the odds were against her, unlike those many others, she was always able to prevail. This was the person who managed to bring back a small fortune in gold bullion and a new act for The Tops after somehow getting lost while inspecting an abandoned Brotherhood bunker. If anyone can somehow defeat two empires at once, it should be her.

To this day however he wasn't quite sure what it was that made it so that she chose to betray him. When he asked as she first opened his sealed chamber, she simply responded that-

"Alright, that should be enough now."

With a nervous grin, Nef took the water bottle from his mouth. Wiping some of the dribbling water from the edge of his mouth with a cloth, the woman patted him on his head once more before telling him, "Anyways, I have to go. Tomorrow's a really big day and I have to get everyone prepared. I really mean it when I said I'll make it up to you."

_"One more thing…"_

As Nef was about to leave, she turned back to face her so-called friend. Raising one of his atrophied arms at her, Robert Edwin House coughed a bit before finally gathering the strength to tell her...

_"Don't… You dare… Fail…"_

Giving her old boss a bit of a salute, Nef answered with him with this.

"The die's been loaded and cast."


End file.
